PITTSBURGHAround suppertime on June 3 in Clearfield County, a geyser of natural gas and sludge began shooting out of a well called Punxsutawney Hunting Club 36. The toxic stew of gas, salt water, mud and chemicals went 75 feet into the air for 16 hours. Some of this mess seeped into a stream northeast of Pittsburgh.

Four days later, as authorities were cleaning up the debris in Pennsylvania, an explosion burned seven workers at a gas well on the site of an abandoned coal mine outside of Moundsville, W.Va., just southwest of Pittsburgh.

The back-to-back emergencies were like a five-alarm fire for John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. For a brief moment, the cable news channels turned their attention away from the BP PLC oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico to the apparent trouble in the nation's expanding onshore natural gas fields.

The events added force to a tough public debate in Pennsylvania and New York and across northern Appalachia about how the environmental impacts of gas drilling balance against the economic benefits of gas and the role it could play in helping electric utilities transition to cleaner fuels.

When used to fire up a power plant, natural gas produces less air pollutants and half of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by conventional coal plants. But extracting the gas from deep sedimentary rock and shipping it to consumers is an industrial process. It requires massive amounts of water and reliable cement and pipe jobs. It also has wastewater-disposal issues and generates air pollution.

"This is a test for people in public life," Hanger says. "Do you get into public service to treat the gas industry fairly and protect our resources, or not? You don't have to choose between producing the gas and protecting our water."

Since they are occurring at relatively the same time...maybe one might consider.....sabotage!!!

Well, considering that they are timed to reinforce the Cloward/Piven-ing of American oil and gas production, and given the anti-American bias of the Regime, arguably, one should be considering treason instead of sabotage.

Carol Browner was a hard core enviro-commie when she was in Florida. Not surprising Obama wanted her.

9
posted on 07/10/2010 3:41:30 PM PDT
by GladesGuru
(In a society predicated upon freedom, it is essential to examine principles,)

“On the record of safety and performance associated with hydraulic fracturing:

Just a note about fracking: First of all, its standard operating procedure in Pennsylvania. And its important to point out that weve never seen an impact to fresh groundwater directly from fracking.

If there was fracturing of the producing formations that was having a direct communication with groundwater, the first thing you would notice is the salt content in the drinking water. Its never happened. After a million times across the country, no ones ever documented drinking water wells that have actually been shown to be impacted by fracking.

A lot of folks relate the situation in Dimock to a fracking problem. I just want to make sure everyones clear on this  that it isnt. What happened in Dimock was that a company was drilling in the Marcellus, and they encountered a shallow gas producing formation which is common in this area of Pennsylvania. It wasnt a fracking problem.

How many wells has fracturing damaged? I assume youre referring to how many drinking water wells.? And in our experience, its been zero.

But [fracking] has been standard operating procedure in Pennsylvania since the 50s and almost 100 percent of the wells drilled in Pennsylvania have been hydraulically fractured using the same [materials] that are being used with the Marcellus today.

Wow! Fast Eddie must really want this to go through...he's got regulators lying through their teeth. Many of the compounds used in fracking weren't even around in the 50s. (And Halliburton and BJ claim they stopped using diesel fuel in fracking fluids two years ago. :-)

15
posted on 07/10/2010 5:17:41 PM PDT
by Gondring
(Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)

Yeah, there are some pretty bold statements being thrown around and I imagine you know the players better than me. I am not sure if they were fracking anywhere in the 50’s, at least not at the scale they do today. Maybe he is referring to when they used to drop dynamite down a hole?

Anyway, I am still not finding any site specific information that is easily accessed from the internet. Still an interesting problem so I will keep looking.

Carol Browner was the one in the Clinton Adminstration who decided that the EPA won't regulate hydrofracturing for oil/gas. Of course, that was before the newer techniques that use higher pressure and more additives...but that was addressed about 5 years ago.

20
posted on 07/10/2010 6:25:40 PM PDT
by Gondring
(Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)

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